Simple Freedom Wireless - Archive Only

Simple Freedom was a pretty good independent prepaid
cell phone plan which was bought by Alltel and was going to be merged
into their services. The rest of the review is more for historical
purposes. (Alltel itself was later bought by Verizon.)

Rates are 15 cents per minute and 50 cents per minute roaming
charges. Text messages cost 10 cents to send. In short it’s cheaper than
Tracfone but more expensive than Net 10. In exchange you get more
stylish handsets.

Coverage

The service uses Alltel's network as its primary (local) network.
Alltel claims to have the “largest network” based on an independent
study, though with lots of qualifiers. Therefore presumably you won’t
have to pay roaming charges very often. Actually, the fact that they
have the option for roaming charges is actually means that
Simple Freedom coverage
is better for you, because you don’t face the situation as with some
other carriers where if you’re in an area not covered by their network,
there’s no roaming charges, you’re simply out of luck!

Rates

Airtime Refill

You can buy airtime in denominations of $20, $30, $50 of airtime good
for 60 days each, or $100 of airtime (665 local minutes) good for one
year.

You can refill your airtime using either Simple Freedom or
Alltel prepaid cards which are available in Alltel stores as well as
places like Walmart.

Both types of refill cards should still work, but the minutes may get charged according to the Alltel plans.

Activation

You have to activate by calling them up from another phone. When you
activate your phone you get 60 minutes free, and then you can get an
additional 60 free minutes by mentioning the latest (June 2007)
promotional code: ACT0609

Reactivation

Alltel Customer Care

Phones

You can choose from five different handsets, including at least one camera phone:

Kyocera Candid
Nice camera flip phone.

Motorola W315
Basic flip phone. Downloadable ringtones, etc.

Nokia 2865i
Bluetooth phone with FM radio!

Conclusion

All in all, Simple Freedom was a decent prepaid wireless provider. Not
the cheapest but was still a little cheaper than Tracfone at the time for basic service. One drawback
was that you could not activate or buy airtime online.